Yoga helps Daytona Beach students relax for FCAT

Monday

Apr 21, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By JIM HAUGjim.haug@news-jrnl.com

On the Saturday before a week of standardized testing, students at R.J. Longstreet Elementary School were twisting their way out of modern pressures through the ancient practice of yoga. The discipline with roots in Eastern religion teaches breath control, simple meditation and postures. Schools across the country have adopted yoga to improve concentration and calm jittery nerves in response to high-stakes exams, according to Edi Pasalis, the director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in western Massachusetts. Call it no yoga mat left behind.Before being faced with the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and on mats donated by the We Are Yoga studio in Ormond Beach, the young yogis (boys) and yoginis (girls) of Longstreet were learning how to breathe.“Inhale through your nose and fill up your lungs nice and slow — it should take about six seconds,” said Jen Mollo, the school’s testing coordinator, while leading the third, fourth and fifth graders in the half-moon posture, named for the way the body bends like a crescent.“Exhale out of your mouth. It’s going to make a big sound. We call it an h-a sound like ‘ha,’ ” said Mollo, who moonlights as an instructor at We Are Yoga.Because the kids were at a science camp to get ready for the FCAT, the stated purpose of the yoga was to learn about energy, but the relaxing and invigorating benefits were evident, too. Barbara Privat, mother of Anzley, 9, was happy that the students had a healthy outlet.“They are learning, but without the stress of knowing the test is coming,” Privat said. “It relaxes them a little bit more.”Pasalis, the director at Kripalu, a retreat center that serves more than 36,000 yoga practitioners annually and hosts an academic symposium on yoga and learning, said “a lot of schools are using it to support test prep. It is useful for performance anxiety.”Last year, Mollo used yoga to help students relax during the FCAT exams.“They get two minute breaks here and there,” she said. “They would do postures.”Mollo was careful to make sure the postures were not too invigorating because “you don’t want to rile them up during the test. So you have to look at the more relaxing side of this.”Because yoga puts people into a better frame of mind, the effects can be wide ranging, Pasalis said.“From the inside out, it transforms their behavior,” she said.“One of the things we have seen is that even if you don’t teach anything about diet, people who practice yoga end up eating more fruits and vegetables,” Pasalis said. “They’re more in tune with their body. They’re more aware of the impact of the choices they make.”More as a way to promote mindfulness than as a sport, yoga has found its way into education from kindergarten to graduate school, Pasalis said.According to a year-long study of yoga practiced at a Massachusetts high school, students reported such benefits as stress reduction, improved self image and optimism for the future. One negative effect is that boys did feel peer pressure against practicing yoga. The study was published a year ago in Explore: Journal of Science and Healing.Yoga has become popular enough at Longstreet that Mollo is thinking about starting an after-school club for students, parents and teachers alike. The school is Title 1, meaning a high percentage of students qualify for free and reduced lunch.Last year, when Mollo taught at Osceola Elementary School, students and parents took classes with her at Bikram Yoga, where the heat is kept at about 105 degrees.Because kids’ lungs are still developing, they stayed outside the studio for the more rigorous exercises, Mollo said.But it’s the religious connotations of yoga that has raised the temperature of parents in other parts of the country.Last year, a judge in California rejected pleas from parents who said yoga classes are inherently religious and violate the constitutional principle of separating church and state.San Diego Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer sided with school administrators who argued the practice is a secular way to promote strength, flexibility and balance. Meyer noted the school district had stripped classes of all cultural references, including the Sanskrit language. The lotus position was renamed the “crisscross applesauce” pose.The Encinitas Union School District is believed to be the first in the country to have full-time yoga teachers at every school. The lessons were funded by a $533,720, three-year grant from the K.P. Jois Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Encinitas that promotes Ashtanga yoga.Mollo noted that she teaches a Bikram-style of yoga that does not mention spirituality, “which makes it super-easy for me” to take to a classroom. Longstreet Principal Marie Stratton said the yoga is simply “exercise.”Because the camp was a voluntary activity on a Saturday morning, attendance was not mandatory, either. Students did other fun activities like making rockets with Alka Seltzer propulsion and dropping watermelons from the roof.“We’ve tried to make science and learning fun,” Longstreet Assistant Principal Becky Pritchard said.Mollo has practiced yoga for three years, training in Los Angeles last year under Bikram Yoga founder Bikram Choudry, to become an instructor.“I personally have gained so much from it,” Mollo said. “Not only mentally, but physically I have lost over 75 pounds in my practice.”Mollo said she has equal passions for both yoga and teaching. Pasilas said there is no conflict between the two. “It helps kids show up for learning,” she said.

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